China vows to cap water consumption, crack down on polluters

A migrant worker carries water for drinking and cooking from a public tap at a migrant workers' village in Beijing, China February 24, 2016.
REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

SHANGHAI China will keep national annual water consumption below 670 billion cubic meters (bcm) through to 2020, the state planning agency said on Wednesday, part of efforts to ease chronic regional shortages by cutting waste and boosting efficiency.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said it would also aim to cap total water consumption at less than 700 bcm a year though to 2030.

China has long been worried about a water supply bottleneck that could jeopardize future economic development, with per capita supplies at less than a third of the global average.

Consumption last year stood at 635 billion cubic meters, up from 554.8 bcm in 2004, and China's scarce supplies have been put under increasing pressure from growing demand for agriculture, energy and manufacturing, as well as a rising population and widespread pollution problems.

Despite commitments to crack down on polluters, the quality of water in rivers, lakes and reservoirs in several regions has deteriorated significantly, according to inspection teams reporting back to the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

In a document published on Wednesday, the NDRC pledged to ensure that three quarters of its surface water was fit for human consumption by 2030, up from 66 percent last year, and it also promised to ensure that underground water extraction rates were sustainable.

It also included targets to improve soil quality, reduce overuse of pesticides and fertilizer, and tackle overgrazing on China's grasslands.

China said in a five-year plan on water pollution published earlier this month that it would cut water use per unit of GDP by 23 percent over the 2016-2020 period, and would also "significantly reduce" the amount used in irrigation.

It also pledged to introduce tiered water pricing in urban regions in a bid to encourage conservation, and said it would also create a water usage quota system covering all major agricultural and industrial products.

(Reporting by David Stanway; Additional reporting by Dominique Patton in BEIJING; Editing by Richard Pullin)

Next In Environment

TOKYO Japan's government on Friday nearly doubled its projections for costs related to the Fukushima nuclear disaster to 21.5 trillion yen ($188 billion), increasing pressure on Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) to step up reform and improve its performance.

Twenty-three rescued African penguins that had been abandoned several weeks ago along the coast of South Africa were released back into the wild on Thursday, according to officials at the U.S. aquarium who helped rehabilitate them.

Washington state filed an environmental lawsuit on Thursday against agricultural company Monsanto Co seeking damages and cleanup costs associated with the company's production of PCBs, the state's attorney general said.

Reuters is the news and media division of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters is the world's largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms. Learn more about Thomson Reuters products: